ANSWERED.
Weary, with tired eyes that sought
Some answer to an hopeless thought;
Sad, with remembrance of dead years,
That woke with the bright flush of morn,
But faded in a mist of tears
Before their promise could be born,—
I stood awhile upon the verge
Of a far-rolling sweep of sea,
Whose fading distance seemed to merge
Into the vast eternity.
The ghosts of things that had been dead,
Yet lived again;
The salt of tears was on my tongue;
The sound of bitter sobbing, wrung
From hearts which Joy had cursed and fled,
Was in my brain;
And from the main,
Borne on a sudden tremulous breath
Of air that chilled me as the touch of death,
Came an exceeding bitter cry,
As of a soul in mortal pain:
"All that is fair shall die!"
I did not know it was my own:
So the gloom deepened; then there came,—
First in faint echoes from afar
That gathered, as an undertone,
In most hushed stillness, to one sound,—
The mention of an awful name:
And the same instant flashed around
The sudden glory of a risen star.
